14th July 2009

10:02pm: Rare Slash: I Write ItTitle: "In Vino"Fandom:To Serve Them All My Days, novel by R. F. Delderfield, PBS miniseries adaptationPairing: Ian Howarth/David Powlett-JonesWord count: 3681Rating: PG-13Warnings: war images (WWI)Disclaimer: The characters in this story belong to the estate of R. F. Delderfield and the BBC copyright holders for the script. I have quoted around five minutes of dialog, but this story makes no profit and is meant as tribute to the performance of the actors and the storytelling of the author.

Author's Note: Much though I love the book, Alan McNaughtan's performance of the role of Haworth makes the miniseries so much slashier that I just had to write this.

3rd April 2009

A lot of the discussion, the most important and moving part, has been the perspectives of readers and writers of color; the fact that this is the real heart of the issue has needed a lot, a whole, whole lot, of work to keep on the table so that the whole thing doesn't just slip down the toilet of FAIL. Specifically, so much "OMG consider our white feelings!!!11" has been going around that there's now a whole community to encourage more talk about racism in F/SF instead, of, you know, what a very nice person Failhappy Fails was when I met him/her at a con, while Cocksure Failey and Mr. and Mrs. Pantsless Failton-Smythe are just loyal friends and the lurkers s. them in e. (And for god's sake talk nice, because otherwise I won't listen, having the privelege to turn away and all.)

Meanwhile, um, I'm a white writer who wants to talk about my feelings and how I write characters of color. In other words, I am on the outskirts of the discussion. Which is the right place. Moreover, I don't imagine there's really that much traffic here, especially since it's been three years since I posted anything, so that my big contribution is probably the links above.

Still, I'm posting.

I do write characters of color because we do not live on White Planet. I write characters of various sexualities because we're all here. I write about women and men...yeah, you get it. (Intersex, I'm going to get to in another post, if I decide not to just dump the draft and try to fail better next time.)

I write fantasy and SF because I imagine other worlds, other versions of our world, and I write slash fanfic and historical fiction out of the same basic impulse, since "Starsky and Hutch could be bi, you know (and so could those fighter pilots in Dawn Patrol)" is frankly a fantastic/othering viewpoint, a resistant reading of the real "text"s.

The impulses are alike for me. But there are, there MUST be differences in approach and method. I'm going to spend a couple of posts navel-gazing and self-evaluating about this. If nobody looks, it's still worth doing, and worth doing where I can be called on my shit if I need it and if anybody bothers.

(Offline life note: end of tax season and afterwards of semester may cramp my responding and/or posting style. Comments are, nevertheless, open.)

29th May 2006

2:24pm: Apology
I've got an early-summer-session class, and it's been EATING MY BRAIN. I'm making this general apology for not answering the feedback people have given me, and ... now I will go answer it.

But I just read yet another five-things story (in SG-A, actually) and thought again about that shapeless mess of a story about S&H's first kiss that I periodically pull out and try to write, and maybe...maybe, what it needs is to be a couple of five-things-meme stories.

So let's try that. Here's the first one, which was the easiest since it was just carving out of the huge shapeless mush of scenes that the draft was.